arch of sky, the circumference of that little world of peace. nations with the varying mountain-ridges and ranges, that show top over top in bewildering succession, and give hints of other valleys Circumscribed as are the boundaries of this beyond, and of Tarns rarely visited, among the place, yet the grounds are so artfully, while one moorland wastes. A single long dim shadow, thinks so artlessly, laid out, that, wandering falling across the water, alters the whole physi- through their labyrinthine recesses, you might ognomy of the scene-nor less a single bright believe yourself in an extensive wilderness. streak of sunshine, brightening up some fea- Here you come out upon a green open glade— ture formerly hidden, and giving animation (you see by the sundial it is past seven o'clock) and expression to the whole face of the Lake. -there the arms of an immense tree overshaAbout a short mile from the Village Inn, you dow what is in itself a scene-yonder you have will pass by, without seeing it-unless warned an alley that serpentizes into gloom and ob not to do so-one of the most singularly beau- scurity-and from that cliff you doubtless tiful habitations in the world. It belongs to a would see over the tree-tops into the outer and gentleman of the name of Barber, and, we be- airy world. With all its natural beauties is lieve, has been almost entirely built by him- intermingled an agreeable quaintness, that the original hut on which his taste has worked shows the owner has occasionally been workhaving been a mere shell. The spirit of the ing in the spirit of fancy, almost caprice; the place seems to us to be that of Shadowy Si-tool-house in the garden is not without its ornalence. Its bounds are small; but it is an indi- ments-the barn seems habitable, and the byre visible part of a hillside so secret and silvan, has somewhat the appearance of a chapel. that it might be the haunt of the roe. You You see at once that the man who lives here, hear the tinkle of a rill, invisible among the instead of being sick of the world, is attached hazels-a bird sings or flutters-a bee hums to all elegant socialties and amities; that he his way through the bewildering woods-but uses silver cups instead of maple bowls, shows no louder sound. Some fine old forest-trees his scallop-shell among other curiosities in his extend widely their cool and glimmering shade; cabinet, and will treat the passing pilgrim with and a few stumps or armless trunks, whose pure water from the spring, if he insists upon bulk is increased by a load of ivy that hides that beverage, but will first offer him a glass the hollow wherein the owls have their domi- of the yellow cowslip-wine, the cooling claret, cile, give an air of antiquity to the spot, that, or the sparkling champagne. but for other accompaniments, would almost be melancholy. As it is, the scene has a pensive character. As yet you have seen no house, and wonder whither the gravel-walks are to conduct you, winding fancifully and fantastically through the smooth-shaven lawn, bestrewed by a few large leaves of the horsechestnut or sycamore. But there are clustered verandas where the nightingale might woo the rose, and lattice-windows reaching from eaves to ground-sill, so sheltered that they might stand open in storm and rain, and tall circular chimneys, shaped almost like the stems of the trees that overshadow the roof irregular, and over all a gleam of blue sky and a few motionless clouds. The noisy world ceases to be, and the tranquil heart, delighted with the sweet seclusion, breathes, "Oh! that this were my cell, and that I were a hermit!" But you soon see that the proprietor is not a hermit; for everywhere you discern unostentatious traces of that elegance and refinement that belong to social and cultivated life; nothing rude and rough-hewn, yet nothing prim and precise. Snails and spiders are taught to keep their own places; and among the flowers of that hanging garden on a sunny slope, not a weed is to be seen, for weeds are beautiful only by the wayside, in the matting of hedgeroots, by the mossy stone, and the brink of the well in the brae—and are offensive only when they intrude into society above their own rank, and where they have the air and accent of aliens. By pretty pebbled steps of stairs you mount up from platform to platform of the sloping woodland banks-the prospect widening as you ascend, till from a bridge that spans a leaping rivulet, you behold in full blow all (irassmere Vale, Village, Church-tower, and Lake, the whole of the mountains, and a noble Perhaps we are all beginning to get a little hungry, but it is too soon to breakfast; so, leaving the village of Grassmere on the right, keep your eye on Helm-crag, while we are finding, without seeking, our way up Easdale. Easdale is an arm of Grassmere, and in the words of Mr. Green the artist, "it is in places. profusely wooded, and charmingly sequestered among the mountains." Here you may hunt the waterfalls, in rainy weather easily run down, but difficult of detection in a drought. Several pretty rustic bridges cross and recross the main stream and its tributaries; the cottages, in nook and on hillside, are among the most picturesque and engaging in the whole country; the vale widens into spacious and noble meadow-grounds, on which might suitably stand the mansion of any nobleman in England-as you near its head, every thing gets wild and broken, with a slight touch of dreariness, and by no very difficult ascent, we might reach Easdale-tarn in less than an hour's walking from Grassmere-a lonely and impressive scene, and the haunt of the angler almost as frequently as of the shepherd. How far can we enjoy the beauty of external nature under a sharp appetite for breakfast or dinner? On our imagination the effect of hunger is somewhat singular. We no longer regard sheep, for instance, as the fleecy or the bleating flock. Their wool or their baaing is nothing to us-we think of necks, and gigots, and saddles of mutton; and even the lamb frisking on the sunny bank is eaten by us in the shape of steaks and fry. If it is in the morning, we see no part of the cow but her udder, distilling richest milkiness. Instead of ascending to heaven on the smoke of a cottage chimney, we put our arms round the column, and descend on the lid of the great pan pre paring the family breakfast. Every interest- this, where all is steadfast but the clouds ing object in the landscape seems edible-our whose very being is change, and the flow of mouth waters all over the vale-as the village waters that have been in motion since the clock tolls eight, we involuntarily say grace, Flood. and Price on the Picturesque gives way to Meg Dods's Cookery. Mrs. Bell of the Red Lion Inn, Grassmere, can give a breakfast with any woman in England. She bakes incomparable bread-firm, close, compact, and white, thin-crusted, and admirably raised. Her yeast always works well. What butter! Before it a primrose must hide its unyellowed head. Then jam of the finest quality, goose, rasp, and strawberry! and as the jam is, so are her jellies. Hens cackle that the eggs are fresh-and these shrimps were scraping the sand last night in the Whitehaven sea. What glorious bannocks of barley-meal! Crisp wheaten cakes, too, no thicker than a wafer. Do not, our good sir, appropriate that cut of pickled salmon; it is heavier than it looks, and will weigh about four pounds. One might live a thousand years, yet never weary of such mutton-ham. Virgin honey, indeed! Let us hope that the bees were not smothered, but by some gracious disciple of Bonar or Huber decoyed from a full hive into an empty one, with half the summer and all the autumn before them to build and saturate their new Comb-Palace. No bad thing is a cold pigeon pie, especially of cushats. To hear them cooing in the centre of a wood is one thing, and to see them lying at the bottom of a pie is another-which is the better, depends entirely on time, place, and circumstance. Well, a beef-steak at breakfast is rather startling-but let us try a bit with these fine ingenuous youthful potatoes, from a light sandy soil on a warm slope. Next to the country clergy, smugglers are the most spiritual of characters; and we verily believe that to be "sma' still." Our dear sir-you are in orders, we believe-will you have the goodness to return thanks? Yes, now you may ring the bell for the bill. Moderate indeed! With a day's work before one, there is nothing like the deep broad basis of breakfast. SECOND SAUNTER. It is yet only ten o'clock—and what a multitude of thoughts and feelings, sights and sounds, lights and shadows have been ours since sunrise! Had we been in bed, all would have remained unfelt and unknown. But, to be sure, one dream might have been worth them all. Dreams, however, when they are over, are gone, be they of bliss or bale, heaven or the shades. No one weeps over a dream. With such tears no one would sympathize. Give us reality," the sober certainty of waking bliss," and to it memory shall cling. Let the object of our sorrow belong to the living world, and, transient though it be, its power may be immortal. Away then, as of little worth, all the unsubstantial and wavering world of dreams, and in their place give us the very humblest humanities, so much the better if enjoyed in some beautiful scene of nature like Ha! a splendid equipage with a coronet. And out steps, handed by her elated husband, a high-born, beautiful and graceful bride. They are making a tour of the Lakes, and the honeymoon hath not yet filled her horns. If there be indeed such a thing as happiness on this earth, here it is-youth, elegance, health, rank, riches, and love-all united in ties that death alone can sunder. How they hang towards each other-the blissful pair! Blind in their passion to all the scenery they came to admire, or beholding it but by fits and snatches, with eyes that can see only one object. She hath already learnt to forget father and mother, and sister and brother, and all the young creatures like herself-every one-that shared the pastimes and the confidence of her virgin youthhood. With her, as with Genevieve "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, And feed his sacred flame!" And will this holy state of the spirit endure? No -it will fade, and fade, and fade away, so imperceptibly, so unconsciously, (so like the shortening of the long summer days, that lose minute after minute of the light, till again we hear the yellow leaves rustling in autumnal twilight,) that the heart within that snow-drifted bosom will know not how great has been the change, till at last it shall be told the truth, and know that all mortal emotion, however paradisiacal, is born to die. these are, on all such occasions, whispered by "O, happy state, where souls together draw, Where love is liberty, and nature law!" What profound powers of affection, grief, pity, sympathy, delight, and religion belong, by its constitution, to the frame of every human soul! And if the courses of life have not greatly thwarted the divine dispensations of nature, will they not all rise into genial play within bosoms consecrated to each other's happiness, till comes between them the cold hand of death? It would seem that every thing fair and good must flourish under that holy necessity—every thing foul and bad fade away; and that no quarrel or unkindness could ever be between pilgrims travelling together through time to eternity, whether their path lead through an Eden or a waste. Habit itself comes with humble hearts to be gracious and benign; they who have once loved, will not, for that very reason, cease to love; memory shall brighten when hope decays; and if the present be not now so blissful, so thrilling, so steeped in rap ture as it was in the golden prime, yet shall it without repining suffice to them whose thoughts borrow unconsciously sweet comforts from the past and future, and have been taught by mutual cares and sorrows to indulge tempered expectations of the best earthly felicity. And is it not so? How much tranquillity and con tentment in human homes! Calm onflowings of life shaded in domestic privacy, and seen but at times coming out into the open light! What brave patience under poverty! What beautiful resignation in grief! Riches take wings to themselves and flee away-yet without and within the door there is the decency of a changed, not an unhappy lot-The clouds of adversity darken men's characters even as if they were the shadows of dishonour, but conscience quails not in the gloom-The well out of which humility hath her daily drink, is nearly dried up to the very spring, but she upbraideth not Heaven-Children, those flowers that make the hovel's earthen floor delightful as the glades of Paradise, wither in a day, but there is holy comfort in the mother's tears; nor are the groans of the father altogether without relief for they have gone whither they came, and are blooming now in the bowers of Heaven. Reverse the picture-and tremble for the fate of those whom God hath made one, and whom no man must put asunder. In common natures, what hot and sensual passions, whose gratification ends in indifference, disgust, loathing, or hatred! What a power of misery, from fretting to madness, lies in that mean but mighty word-Temper! The face, to whose meek beauty smiles seemed native during the days of virgin love, shows now but a sneer, a scowl, a frown, or a glare of scorn. The shape. of those features is still fine-the eye of the gazelle-the Grecian nose and forehead-the ivory teeth, so small and regular-and thin line of ruby lips breathing Circassian luxurythe snow-drifts of the bosom still heave there —a lovelier waist Apollo never encircled stepping from the chariot of the sun-nor limbs more graceful did ever Diana veil beneath the shadows of Mount Latmos. But she is a fiend -a devil incarnate, and the sovereign beauty of three counties has made your house a hell. But suppose that you have had the sense and sagacity to marry a homely wife-or one comely at the best-nay, even that you have sought to secure your peace by admitted ugliness—or wedded a woman whom all tongues call-plain; then may an insurance-ticket, indeed, flame like the sun in miniature on the front of your house-but what Joint-Stock Company can undertake to repay the loss incurred by the perpetual singeing of the smouldering flames of strife, that blaze up without warning at bed and board, and keep you in an everlasting alarm of fire? We defy you to utter the most glaring truth that shall not be instantly contradicted. The most rational proposals for a day or hour of pleasure, at home or abroad, are on the nail negatived as absurd. If you dine at home every day for a month, she wonder, why nobody asks you out, and fears you take no trouble to make yourself agreeable. If you dine from home one day in a month, then are you charged with being addicted to tavern-clubs. Children are perpetual bones of contention—there is hatred and sorrow in house-bills rent and taxes are productive of endless grievances; and although education be an excellent thing-indeed quite a fortune in itself—especially to a poor Scotsman going to England, where all the people are barbarous yet is it irritatingly expensive when a great Northern Nursery sends out its hordes, and gawky hoydens and hobble-te-hoys are getting themselves accomplished in the foreign languages, music, drawing, geography, the use of the globes, and the dumb-bells. "Let observation, with extensive view, (Two bad lines by the way, though written by Dr. Johnson)-and observation will find the literature of all countries filled with sarcasms against the marriage-life. Our old Scottish songs and ballads, especially, delight in representing it as a state of ludicrous misery and discomfort. There is little or no talk of horns the dilemma of English wit; but every individual moment of every individual minute, of every individual hour, of every individual day, and so on, has its peculiar, appropriate, characteristic, and incurable wretchedness. Yet the delightful thing is, that in spite of all this jeering and gibing, and grinning and hissing, and pointing with the finger-marrying and giving in marriage, births and christenings, continue their career of prosperity; and the legitimate population doubles itself somewhere about every thirty-five years. Single houses rise out of the earth-double houses become villages-villages towns-towns cities. and our Metropolis is itself a world! The The While the lyrical poetry of Scotland is, thus rife with reproach against wedlock, it is equally rife with panegyric on the tender passion that leads into its toils. In one page you shudder in a cold sweat over the mean miseries of the poor "gudeman;" in the next you see, unconscious of the same approaching destiny, the enamoured youth lying on his Mary's bosom beneath the milk white thorn. pastoral pipe is tuned under a fate that hurries on all living creatures to love; and not one lawful embrace is shunned from any other fears than those which themselves spring up in the poor man's thoughtful heart. wicked betray, and the weak fall-bitter tears are shed at midnight from eyes once bright as the day-fair faces never smile again, and many a hut has its broken heart-hope comes and goes, finally vanquishing, or yielding to despair-crowned passion dies the sated death, or, with increase of appetite, grows by what it feeds on-wide, but unseen, over all the regions of the land, are cheated hopes, vain desires, gnawing jealousy, dispirited fear, and swarthy-souled revenge-beseechings, seductions, suicides, and insanities-and all, all spring from the root of Love; yet all the nations of the earth call the Tree blest, and long as time endures, will continue to flock thither panting to devour the fruitage, of which every other golden globe is poison and death. Smile away then, with all thy most irresistible blandishments, thou young and happy Bride! What business have we to prophesy bedimming tears to those resplendent eyes? or that the talisman of that witching smile can ever lose its magic? Are not the high-born daughters of England also the high-souled? And hath not honour and virtue, and charity and religion, guarded for centuries the lofty line of thy pure and unpolluted blood? Joy. ful, therefore, mayst tnou be, as the dove in | the sunshine on the Tower-top-and as the dove serene, when she sitteth on her nest within the yew-tree's gloom, far within the wood! Passing from our episode, let us say that we are too well acquainted with your taste, feeling, and judgment, to tell you on what objects to gaze or glance, in such a scene as the vale and village of Grassmere. Of yourselves you will find out the nooks and corners from which the pretty whitewashed and flowering cottages do most picturesquely combine with each other, and with the hills, and groves, and old church-tower. Without our guiding hand will you ascend knoll and eminence, be there pathway or no pathway, and discover for yourselves new Lake-Landscapes. Led by your own sweet and idle, chaste and noble fancies, you will disappear, single, or in pairs and parties, into little woody wildernesses, where you will see nothing but ground-flowers and a glimmering contiguity of shade. Solitude sometimes, you know, is best society, and short retirement urges sweet return. Various travels or voyages of discovery may be undertaken, and their grand object attained in little more than an hour. The sudden whirr of a cushat is an incident, or the leaping of a lamb among the broom. In the quiet of nature, matchless seems the music of the milkmaid's song-and of the hearty laugh of the haymakers, crossing the meadow in rows, how sweet the cheerful echo from Helm-crag! Grassmere appears by far the most beautiful place in all the Lakecountry. You buy a field-build a cottageand in imagination lie (for they are too short to enable you to sit) beneath the shadow of your own trees! Was she one flower of many, and singled out by death's unsparing finger from a wreath of beauty, whose remaining blossoms seem now to have lost all their fragrance and all their brightness? Or was she the sole delight of her grayhaired parents' eyes, and is the voice of joy extinguished in their low-roofed home for ever? Had her loveliness been beloved, and had her innocent hopes anticipated the bridal-day, nor her heart, whose beatings were numbered, ever feared that narrow bed? All that we know is her name and age-you see them glittering on her coffin-"Anabella Irvine, aged xix years!" The day seems something dim, now that we are all on our way back to Ambleside; and, although the clouds are neither heavier nor more numerous than before, somehow or other the sun is a little obscured. We must not indulge too long in a mournful mood—yet let us all sit down under the shadow of this grove of sycamores, overshadowing this reedy bay of Rydal-mere, and listen to a Tale of Tears. Many a tame tradition, embalmed in a few pathetic verses, lives for ages, while the memory of the most affecting incidents, to which genius has allied no general emotion, fades like the mist, and leaves heart-rending griefs undeplored. Elegies and dirges might indeed have well been sung amidst the green ruins of yonder Cottage, that looks now almost like a fallen wall-at best, the remnants of a cattleshed shaken down by the storm. Thirty years ago-how short a time in national history-how long in that of private sorrows!-all tongues were speaking of the death that there befell, and to have seen the weeping, you would have thought that the funeral could never have been forgotten. But stop now the shepherd on the hill, and ask him who lived in that nook, and chance is he knows not even their name, much less the In an English village-highland or lowland -seldom is there any spot so beautiful as the churchyard. That of Grassmere is especially so, with the pensive shadows of the old church-story of their afflictions. It was inhabited by tower settling over its cheerful graves. Ay, its cheerful graves! Startle not at the word as too strong-for the pigeons are cooing in belfry, the stream is murmuring round the mossy churchyard wall, a few lambs are lying on the mounds, and flowers laughing in the sunshine over the cells of the dead. But hark! the bell tolls-one-one-one-a funeral knell, speaking not of time, but of eternity! To-day there is to be a burial-and close to the wall of the Tower you see the new-dug grave. Allan Fleming, his wife, and an only child, known familiarly in her own small world by the name of Lucy OF THE FOLD. In almost every district among the mountains, there is its peculiar pride-some one creature to whom nature has been especially kind, and whose personal beauty, sweetness of disposition, and felt superiority of mind and manner, single her out, unconsciously, as an object of attraction and praise, making her the May-day Queen of the unending year. Such a darling was Lucy Hush! The sound of singing voices in yon- Fleming ere she had finished her thirteenth der wood, deadened by the weight of umbrage! year; and strangers, who had heard tell of her Now it issues forth into the clear air, and now loveliness, often dropt in, as if by accident, to all is silence-but the pause speaks of death. see the Beauty of Rydal-mere. Her parents Again the melancholy swell ascends the sky- rejoiced in their child; nor was there any reaand then comes slowly along the funeral pro- son why they should dislike the expression of cession, the coffin borne aloft, and the mourn- delight and wonder with which so many reers all in white; for it is a virgin who is garded her. Shy was she as a woodland bird, carried to her last home. Let every head be but as fond too of her nest; and, when there reverently uncovered while the psalm enters was nothing near to disturb her, her life was the gate, and the bier is borne for holy rites almost a perpetual hymn. From joy to sadalong the chancel of the church, and laid ness, and from sadness to joy; from silence to down close to the altar. A smothered sobbing song, and from song to silence; from stillness disturbeth not the service-'tis a human spirit like that of the butterfly on the flower, to mobreathing in accordance with the divine. Mor- tion like that of the same creature wavering tals weeping for the immortal-Earth's pas- in the sunshine over the wood-top-was to sions cleaving to one who is now in heaven. Lucy as welcome a change as the change of pas-in lights and shadows, breezes and calms, in the | the hearth around which was read the mornmountain-country of her birth. ing and the evening prayer. One summer day, a youthful stranger appeared at the door of the house, and after an hour's stay, during which Lucy was from home, asked if they would let him have lodging with them for a few months-a single room for bed and books, and that he would take his meals with the family. Enthusiastic boy! to him poetry had been the light of life, nor did ever creature of poetry belong more entirely than he to the world of imagination. He had come into the free mountain region from the confinement of college-walls, and his spirit expanded within him like a rainbow. No eyes had he for realities-all nature was seen in the light of genius-not a single object at sunrise and sunset the same. All was beautiful within the circle of the green hill-tops, whether shrouded in the soft mists or clearly outlined in a cloudless sky. Home, friends, colleges, cities-all sunk away into oblivion, and HARRY HOWARD felt as if wafted off on the wings of a spirit, and set down in a land beyond the sea, foreign to all he had before experienced, yet in its perfect and endless beauty appealing every hour more tenderly and strongly to a spirit awakened to new power, and revelling in new emotion. In that cottage he took up his abode. In a few weeks came a library of books in all languages; and there was much wondering talk over all the countryside about the mysterious young stranger who now lived at the Fold. Every day—and, when he chose to absent himself from his haunts among the hills, every hour was Lucy before the young poet's eyesand every hour did her beauty wax more beautiful in his imagination. Who Mr. Howard was, or even if that were indeed his real name, no one knew; but none doubted that he was of gentle birth, and all with whom he had ever conversed in his elegant amenity, could have sworn that a youth so bland and free, and with such a voice, and such eyes, would not have injured the humblest of God's creatures, much less such a creature as Lucy of the Fold. It was indeed even so-for, before the long summer days were gone, he who had never had a sister, loved her even as if she had slept on the same maternal bosom. Father or mother he now had none—indeed, scarcely one near relation-although he was rich in this world's riches, but in them poor in comparison with the noble endowments that nature had lavished upon his mind. His guardians took little heed | of the splendid but wayward youth-and knew not now whither his fancies had carried him, were it even to some savage land. Thus, the Fold became to him the one dearest roof under the roof of heaven. All the simple on-goings of that humble home, love and imagination beautified into poetry; and all the rough or coarser edges of lowly life, were softened away in the light of genius that transmuted every thing on which it fell; while all the silent intimations which nature gave there of her primal sympathies, in the hut as fine and forceful as in the hall, showed to his excited spirit pre-eminently lovely, and chained it to What wild schemes does not love imagine, and in the face of very impossibility achieve! "I will take Lucy to myself, if it should be in place of all the world. I will myself shed light over her being, till in a new spring it shall be adorned with living flowers that fade not away, perennial and self-renewed. In a few years the bright docile creature will have the soul of a very angel-and then, before God and at his holy altar, mine shall she become for ever here and hereafter-in this paradise of earth, and, if more celestial be, in the paradise of heaven." Thus two summers and two winters wheeled away into the past; and in the change, imperceptible from day to day, but glorious at last, wrought on Lucy's nature by communication with one so prodigally endowed, scarcely could her parents believe it was their same child, except that she was dutiful as before, as affectionate, and as fond of all the familiar objects, dead or living, round and about her birthplace. She had now grown to woman's stature-tall, though she scarcely seemed so except when among her playmates; and in her maturing loveliness, fulfilling, and far more than fulfilling the fair promise of her childhood. Never once had the young strangerstranger no more-spoken to daughter, father, or mother, of his love. Indeed, for all that he felt towards Lucy there must have been some other word than love. Tenderness, which was almost pity--an affection that was often sadwonder at her surpassing beauty, nor less at her unconsciousness of its power-admiration of her spiritual qualities, that ever rose up to meet instruction as if already formed-and that heart-throbbing that stirs the blood of youth when the innocent eyes it loves are beaming in the twilight through smiles or through tears, these, and a thousand other feelings, and above all, the creative faculty of a poet's soul, now constituted his very being when Lucy was in presence, nor forsook him when he was alone among the mountains. At last it was known through the country that Mr. Howard-the stranger, the scholar, the poet, the elegant gentleman, of whom nobody knew much, but whom every body loved, and whose father must at the least have been a lord, was going-in a year or less-to marry the daughter of Allan Fleming-Lucy of the Fold. Oh, grief and shame to the parents-if still living-of the noble Boy! Oh, sorrow for himself when his passion dies-when the dream is dissolved-and when, in place of the angel of light who now moves before him, he sees only a child of earth, lowly-born, and long rudely bred-a being only fair as many others are fair, sister in her simplicity to maidens no less pleasing than she, and partaking of many weaknesses, frailties, and faults now unknown to herself in her happiness, and to him in his love! Was there no one to rescue them from such a fate-from a few months of imaginary bliss, and from many years of real bale? How could such a man as Allan Fleming be so infatuated as sell his child to fickle youth, who |